Black Vs White

The raging debate over black vs white has been there probably since mankind learned to differentiate between colors. Today, though we are brought up with this mentality that people do not become good or bad just because of the color of their skin, the basic question that remains to be answered is - why is it that someone has to tell us that you can't judge a person by the color of their skin, why doesn't such a thing come naturally to us?

I think the answer to this question lies in the way we are brought up. Unknowingly, perhaps, there are so many instances of color discrimination in our forming years that on our sub-conscious this notion gets imprinted that white is good and black is bad. One example that I think contributes significantly to this imprinting is - "from darkness to light", which, needless to say, associates white with good and black with evil. There are other examples of such associations of black with bad/evil in our textbooks and also in holy scriptures.

Therefore, for us, this notion is already imprinted on our sub-conscious. Some of us have chosen to look beyond the skin color of people while others have not. But whatever be the case, the fact remains that even those who don't believe in color discrimination have to put up a conscious effort to overlook it. What is interesting, though, is whether people would still develop similar notion if they were to be brought up in an atmosphere totally free from any form of discrimination (not just color discrimination because the idea is to keep the entire notion of discrimination away and not just color based discrimination).

In my opinion, it would come naturally to us that black is not good while white is good; not as an universal truth but situational. For example, we would notice that in the night human efficiency goes down, darkness restricts our motion and impedes vision, darkness causes uncertainty and thus anxiety and fear. So, there are instances that happen in daily life that help in forming the opinion that white is conducive for human beings while black is not. But, whether the notion formed because of above instances would lead to formation of idea that white human beings are superior to black is something that can't be commented upon, though, in my opinion, over time, people would start believing in it and that is how I think this notion came into existence in the first place.